I was at a restaurant tonight, and they had some golf match with Mark Rypien, Annika Sorenstam, and some E-List celebrities. I was watching a putt go wide, and thought, "I bet you could design a machine to putt for you."

It then made me start thinking about using a machine for an entire golf game. Could you design a machine that could account for wind, elevation, temperature, length, etc., and score a perfect 18? If so, could a machine do it consistently?

My initial reaction is that, if we can put a rover on Mars we can probably design a machine that could score an 18 in golf. But then again, you have wind gusts and temperature microfluctuations and tiny little twigs blowing on the ground that probably can't be predicted.

I don't think you could design a machine that could hit a hole in one every time. But I bet NASA or DARPA could design a machine that could do something like this consistently on 18 holes: 2 holes in one, 14 2's (one drive, one putt), and 2 3's (one drive, two putts). That would be a 36 over 18 holes.

But I'm not a golfer, so what do I know? What do you think?

Poll to follow after I spend ten minutes studying the lay of the land and making practice polls.

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You ever notice how on stop lights, green means go, but on a banana it's the opposite? Yellow means "go ahead." Green means "slow down." And red means "Where the **** did you get that banana?"

I think a machine can beat par. Of course the ball will communicate with the course and club, and with algorithms, a shot becomes finite.

One of the reasons I was thinking about this is my thought that we can get a spacecraft to re-enter pretty much every time (RIP Columbia) in a very complex atmosphere with a very tight window of success. So a golf ball should be easier.

But then I realized a key difference: in the case of a spacecraft, mid-course corrections can be made. In the case of a golf ball, it's unguided after it's launched.

If your "machine" is a system that includes a guidance system inside the golf ball, then I think a score of 18 is inevitable. However, I'm assuming that we're replacing only the golfer and not the golf equipment. In that case, I think the lack of mid-course adjustments will doom any attempt at 18 other than perhaps a lucky round on rare occasions.

You may be correct. The "golfer" is not only the device but the recognition of course, conditions, and almost anything one can name as extraneous. Once that is removed, all that can happen is the ball falls in the cup.